


Josie

by Mychemicalromantic



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: F/M, Night Vale, Origin Story, i'm awful at tags, josie is Cecil's aunt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 18:13:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1479280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mychemicalromantic/pseuds/Mychemicalromantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's pretty much Old Woman Josie before she was old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Josie

Josie was born in the back room of her grandmother's house, her mother and grandmother the only people present. She grew up in a tiny cottage the color of the delicate pink inside of a shell, so close to the sea that the waves lulled her to sleep at night. She and her sisters were all but the terror of their tiny village, running wild in flowered dresses with their bare feet and shins stained white from the dust and sand.    
Josie had always longed to travel. Her father sent home postcards of America and Europe, where he was trained then stationed in the war. The postcards stopped after a while, but little Josie, at just four, was too young to understand why her mother and older sisters stopped playing with her. She kept the postcards under her bed, because no one else wanted them. Josie could relate to her postcards, even with their exotic promises of dark mountains reaching to the sky, capped in snow. 

As soon as she got her mother's blessing, Josie took a plane far, far away. She left the seaside cottage the delicate pink inside of a shell, her four older sisters who had all been wedded long before, her mother, all her childhood memories of dusty shins and cool salty seas. When asked her destination, she handed over all the money she had and said simply wherever it snows.   
And oh, how it snowed in New York! It was everything she could want, even with the stares she got on the streets and the way she had to sit on the back of the crowded buses. 

One snowy morning on the way to her job in the Macy's on Herald Square, she bumped into a young man with an olive complexion and a sheepish, but lovely, smile.   
"I'm so sorry, I didn't even see you there. Do you want me to get you a new coat? You must be all wet."  
Josie laughed and took the hand offered to her, standing easily.  
"No, but I'll take a coffee. I was early to work anyways."  
A tinge of red came to the man's cheeks.  
"You have a lovely voice, Miss..."  
"Josie," she laughed. "And you are?"  
"Gabriel."  
"It's awfully nice to meet you, Gabriel. I should probably be going."  
"Not before I buy you a coffee, at least."  
"Fine enough. Lead the way."

That was the first of many dates. Six months later, they were married. Gabriel was an artist, making a decent living and enough to more than support the two of them.   
Though happy, their marriage was cut short two decades later, when a common cold spiraled into pneumonia. 

 

Josie couldn't stand living in the city anymore- the smell of coffee, the corners where they'd share kisses in the snow, three rapid blasts on a car horn, his distinctive pattern- all reminded her of Gabriel. She found herself longing for sand and heat once more, but adulthood had trained her to view her childhood of wide-open oceans and sticky humidity as hell incarnate. She closed her eyes and pointed to a location on the map in the wall of their home.   
"Nevada?" Josie mused aloud into the empty house.   
This time, it was not anywhere near all her money that she gave at the airport. 

Josie's plane stopped in a tiny town called Night Vale and refused to start again. Though most chose to stay overnight in the airport, Josie decided this would be better than Carson City- where she had planned to stay. 

Josie was once Night Vale's second most beautiful woman. With her close-cropped hair, ebony skin, and empathetic dark eyes, she was deemed gorgeous and became the talk of the town, despite her age and the fact that she never showed interest in another man.   
She adjusted well to Night Vale's strange quirks and got a job in the local radio station. There, she met an excitable little boy who would bounce all around the building, giggling as his tiny sneakered feet trampled over the carpet. He had a third eye in the middle of his forehead and long black hair his mother kept carefully braided. They spoke often, watching as her son- Cecil- tried to persuade the interns to let him attempt to open a radio show catered to elementary schoolers. Josie learned that his mother was a fullblooded Shoshone woman named Kimama whose husband had died shortly after Cecil turned two. The women became very close very quickly and soon, Cecil would run up to Josie with his toy microphone and thrust it upwards, asking "Aunt Josie! Aunt Josie! Quick, what do you think about the cafeteria ladies shedding scales into the cake batter last Friday?"   
Laughing, she'd pick the little boy up and hand him off to his mother, telling him "I think that's enough excitement for today, pigtails, the rest of the interns look exhausted." The toddler squealed at the nickname as he always did and tugged at his hair, giggling. 

She survived her internship (perhaps the fact that she was rapidly approaching middle age saved her) and was quickly promoted to soundboard operation, staying there until something came up, all too soon. 

One night almost a decade later, after an explosion splattered green gel all over the walls and Josie had been volunteered to clean up, she was walking home and savoring the cool night air when suddenly a figure staggered into the road. 

She went as quickly as she could to the small figure only to find it was her beloved little Cecil, hair a mess and eyes wild, red, and teary. He wrapped his arms around her torso and sobbed into her shoulder, hiccuping out incomprehensible words.   
"Hey, hey, calm down. What's wrong?" she asked quickly.   
"It's- they're gone! Aunt Josie, you gotta help, they're gone!"  
"Who is?"  
"My mom and Kerry!" the boy, just twelve at that point, sobbed.   
"Hey, hey, it's okay. Calm down, Cecil. Come home with me and we can get you back home later."  
"Yeah..."   
He sniffed a little and stepped back, resolutely rubbing his nose with the back of one hand, the other tight in Josie's. 

He couldn't go home the next day. It had simply ceased to exist, an empty lot like no one had ever built a house there in the first place.   
Cecil, scared and overtired, burst into a fresh round of tears at that point.   
Josie hugged him tight.   
"I'll get you new clothes. It's about time you get clothes you liked."  
Cecil smiled a little.   
"Yeah... Twelve is a pretty good age."   
Josie smiled fondly at the boy she'd come to think of as her nephew and led him back toward the house that would be theirs. 

After Cecil started working at the radio station, Josie didn't see so much of him.  Sure, they'd talk every so often, but Josie was lonely in her retirement. 

That was when the angels came. Half a dozen figures, five of the purest white and one the color of somewhere dark, the color of a planet lit with no sun. They had no faces and seemed to blur around the edges, fading seamlessly into the background of wherever they stood.  

They kept her company and kept her happy, from being lonely in between the visits from Cecil and his niece, Janice (who would always cry "Grandma!" and leap at her like Cecil used to, begging her to buy cookies from her Daisy troop), from falling trying to do simple household chores.  

It was that way and she was happy until the day the yellow helicopters came. As the shadow over her house slowly faded away, dread replaced it. Sunlight washed over her body and she knew no more. 


End file.
